Cocktail reception with no dinner?

Honestly I feel that if you have your wedding in the early afternoon and then leave a huge gap of time many of your guests may leave and not come back. I really think you should try to find a way to save up some money so you can serve a meal. Maybe to save money you could keep your wedding on a more intimate level and reduce the number of guests that you have to buy meals for? We are doing this, once the meal is over we are having EVERYONE who wasn't at the wedding join us for a dessert social and then the dance will start. Do some research and find meals that are within a budget that you can afford. My FH and I are paying for our entire wedding on our own and we know the money crunch side of things. We have limited our wedding to 75 guests and the meal is $10/plate. We are only buying a small amount of alcohol for our guests, when it's out there will be a cash bar available for their drinking pleasure. My guess is providing alcohol for your guests will be more expensive than a meal would be. Maybe eliminate the alcohol and provide the meal. To help you with the planning side of things here is our timeline of the day: Wedding at 3pm, Social hour 4pm, Dinner 5pm, Dessert social 6pm, Dance 7pm. This way there is always something for our guests to do. Hope that helps you. Good luck with your planning and Congratulations!!

OP, am I understanding correctly that your intentions are to have your guests come to your ceremony, then go out and feed themselves at their own expense and then come back to your reception later for snacks and dancing? Nope, that's not gonna work. I'd do it only if you were family or a VERY close friend but even then I'd be bitching about it under my breath the entire time.

And Babs, only some guests get to come to the whole shebang? What do you tell the guests that weren't cool enough to warrant dinner?

When I first read this, I thought maybe the ceremony was starting at 7 then going right into reception and even then I was thinking people would be getting dressed and going to the venue around 5-7 depending on how far they were and would require dinner. I can't imagine being invited to witness someone's ceremony, told I need to buy myself dinner and go find a place to eat, then come back to celebrate. I hate saying cut the guest list or save more money because those aren't always good options for people, but move this away from mealtime and don't send your guests away for dinner.

"so they can have time to go eat" there's something SERIOUSLY wrong with this statement.

either have your reception start earlier/after ceremony and serve appetizers

or find a way to afford to properly host/feed your loved ones during a meal time.

unbelievable.

As an individual whos family has thrown multiple cocktail parties a year, 6-8 is a perfectly acceptable time to host as long as you have heavy hors D'oeuvres and they have ample heads up. no one will go hungry. (have a few serving stations as well and servers going around with trays and guests will be happy. I think these individuals are under the assumption that the food will be light which is not always the case. ppl always left our parties satisfied and happy to return again for another.